This appeared in a for-sale version on BoingBoing a couple of years ago; but Peter came across a do-it-yourself version of it today. With this gadget, you can use a full bottle of soda, water, what have you, as an impromptu tripod for your camera.
Now you can find out the truth.
If you dare. 😉
I’m not kidding.
(Beware: slight orc-ish nudity.) The orcish poet Urrshahurruk-gah (Celadon Toadstool) was famed throughout the fifty-seven tribes for the quality of her poetry, and also for that time she put a mace through that one guy’s head, while shouting haiku. Her martial poetry was of course the most popular, including such works as “Warpig Sonnets” and “Ode to a Dagger Stuck In Somebody’s Eye,” which dealt with the perennial themes of melee and mayhem popular among orcs. But many believe that her finest work were her more delicate and introspective pieces, including “Reflections Seen In The Blood Of My Enemies,” and the elegant “Poem for Mushrooms Growing From The Skull Of A Dead Elf.”
It was perhaps not entirely politic for Celadon to recite that last piece at an elvish court during a rare cultural exchange program between warring kingdoms, but everyone agreed much later that it had helped to open a really honest dialogue, and there hadn’t been all THAT many casualties, and you couldn’t expect artists to compromise about these things, after all.
Well, don’t just sit there staring. Rush there in your thousands!
(eyeroll)
The image of the duckbilled haggis down at the bottom of the page also gives me pause.
…Apparently it’s a haggis-hunt contest sponsored by the Scotsman newspaper. There are prizes (a stay at Gleneagles, whisky, etc. You just have to spend all day looking at their HaggisCams and waiting to spot a haggis.
“I’m not making this up, you know…”
The British Museum has added something new to the “Turning The Pages” site: a Shockwavy virtual book of Mozart’s “thematic catalogue”, with 75 audio excerpts.
Also available on the same page: Mercator’s first atlas of Europe, and excerpts from the Sherborne Missal, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Baybars’ Qur’an, and da Vinci’s notebooks.
I didn’t know that he’d been writing science fiction, though. Neat!
I’m going to be changing the OOA layout a little here and there over the next couple/few days, so if things start to look weird, please bear with me. They’ll settle down shortly.
The problem with e-Junkie which would have asked readers for $599.00 for each copy of the MS Reader version of A Wind from the South.
(I think moderately well of my work, but, guys, not THAT well.) 😉
It took some tweaking, but it’s finally ready — see the sidebar at the Raetian Tales blog for the purchase link.
This version also contains (in an appendix) a set of maps illustrating Mariarta’s travels. (The .PDF version will also shortly be upgraded to include these: everyone who’s purchased a copy of the book in that format will receive an upgraded version as soon as it’s ready.)
Thanks again to the amiable “test-drivers” who ran the original .LIT file through its paces! You’ll all be receiving a free copy of the final version shortly.
Not much to say about this except that it’s sad to lose so un-diva-like a presence from the artform that invented the word.
Another legendary moment came after one of her frequent battle-of-the-high-note contests with tenor Franco Corelli during the second-act duet from Turandot. Enraged that no matter how hard he tried she could hold onto the climactic high C longer than he could, Corelli apparently got his revenge during their third-act love scene by biting her on the neck instead of kissing her. Ms. Nilsson is said to have telephoned [Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf] Bing to cancel her next performance with the explanation, “I have rabies.”
And another favorite:
Once asked what was the chief requirement for singing the role of Isolde, she replied: “Comfortable shoes.”
I’ve been reworking the basic map that will be coming with future e-versions of A Wind from the South. It’ll be a while before it’s ready, though, so here’s a stopgap measure.
For those readers who use Google Earth, I’ve uploaded a basic placemarks file that shows the major (and minor) locations involved in the book. You can download the file at this link.
(And yes, I’m looking into doing something similar for A Wizard of Mars. We’ll see how that goes.)